Self-help healthcare fuelled shock Greek election win

As the dust settles after Sunday’s elections, which saw the radical Syriza party take power in Greece, self-help groups providing healthcare and other services are springing up across much of Europe in response to cutbacks. They may also be helping to focus voters’ attention on parties like Syriza, which have pledged to overturn the European Union’s financial reforms.

Led by Alexis Tsipras, Syriza also focused on addressing the needs of millions of Greeks who have fallen on hard times as a result of cuts – which include a 24 per cent reduction in healthcare spending in the five years since 2009.

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According to a Greek campaigning group, the Omikron Project, the country now has more than 400 grass-roots groups providing vital services. Around 40 ad hoc clinics are thought to exist throughout Greece, staffed by volunteers and funded by donations. Such clinics have almost certainly helped maintain the health of thousands of Greeks in a country where the unemployment rate is around 25 per cent.

“The volunteer clinics were created to cater to desperate health needs,” says Alex Kentikelenis of the University of Cambridge, who has visited some of them. “They’re all autonomous and rely on doctors and nurses volunteering their time, and people and pharmacies donating drugs, plus other things like diapers or milk.” He says many of the volunteers are left-wing, as is Syriza.

A lack of data makes it difficult to quantify the clinics’ overall contribution, says Kentikelenis. “Forty clinics may not be enough anyway, and they can only provide primary healthcare services. If something’s more serious, they probably have neither the staff nor the facilities to deal with it.”

Elections are also due this year in Spain, which itself has faced major cutbacks and has its own anti-austerity party, Podemos. Against the backdrop of disillusionment with cuts and mainstream politicians, Helena Legido-Quigley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says that health inequalities will probably translate into support for Podemos, as will the success of Syriza.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Self-help and Syriza surge”